


It's All There in the Relationship Contract

by rionaleonhart



Category: Uncharted (Video Games)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-30
Updated: 2011-11-30
Packaged: 2019-07-07 00:27:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,124
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15897204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rionaleonhart/pseuds/rionaleonhart
Summary: Well, all relationships have some problems. Theirs mostly involve mortal danger.





	It's All There in the Relationship Contract

“So,” Nate says, “I was thinking we could go to Indonesia.”

He thinks his nonchalant tone is pretty convincing, but Elena, of course, isn’t convinced. “Okay,” she says, beginning to smile, “what have you found?”

Nate grins.

-

“I’ve been trying to translate it for weeks,’ he says, turning the yellowed pages as carefully as he can. “It’s so water-damaged it’s tough to make anything out, but I’m pretty sure this guy is writing about a pendant. Gold and emeralds. If I’m reading this right, it could be in an ancient Buddhist temple nobody even knows exists.”

“How many languages do you actually _know_?” Elena asks incredulously, leaning over his shoulder.

“The guy who wrote this says the pendant has healing powers.”

“You believe that?” She sounds a little sceptical, but Nate knows she’s prepared to be convinced; wouldn’t be the strangest thing they’ve discovered.

“Well,” he says, “you could definitely buy a lot of health insurance with this thing.”

“Still, a pendant?” Elena asks. “Kind of small-scale for you, isn’t it? No gateway to Shambhala this time? No diamonds as big as the sun?”

“An _entire undiscovered temple_. That’s pretty cool.”

“You know, I’m starting to think you don’t actually care about the treasure at all. You just want to go sightseeing. You’re not trying to trick me into thinking you just happen to want to go to Indonesia; you’re trying to trick yourself into thinking it’s about money.”

Yeah, Nate isn’t going to go down that route. For one thing, she’s probably right. If they get into an argument, Elena’s going to win it. Even if they don’t get into an argument, she’s somehow going to win the conversation.

“Anyway,” he says, turning to look at her, “I need to book the flight. Do you want to come with me?” He tries not to make it too obvious that he really, really wants her to come with him; these trips are a lot more fun with company.

Elena hesitates, scratching her wrist.

“This isn’t something with an ancient curse on it, is it?” she asks. “And we’re not going to get shot at or blown up or anything.”

“No!” Nate says.

Elena looks at him.

“Well,” Nate says. “Probably not.”

-

Not only does the book lead them to a long-lost temple: the temple is still almost completely intact. This is incredible. Nate was expecting some interesting ruins at best, but _this_...

“ _Look_ at this place,” he breathes.

He’s half-expecting Elena to laugh at him, but: “I’m looking,” she says, sounding just as awed.

The walls of the temple are almost solid green up to above their heads with moss and climbing plants; it’s all grey stone above that, but the evening sun gives it an almost golden glow. Nate has to hack through a thick growth of vines just so they can get inside. He’s getting pretty used to fighting through vegetation; it’s no small temple, and he’d wonder how it managed to stay undiscovered for so long if it hadn’t taken them five hours to clear a path here.

“Ta-da,” he says as they walk through the entrance, all his exhaustion falling away. “One ancient temple.”

“Okay,” Elena says, drifting her flashlight across a wall lined with ancient statues. “I know I mock you a lot...”

“You do,” Nate says, adopting a wounded expression. She’s not actually looking at him, so it’s kind of wasted, but whatever. He knows it’s there.

“It’s only because you deserve it,” she says. “But I can see why you do this.”

“What, Shambhala wasn’t enough to convince you?”

“It helps that we didn’t have men with guns forcing us to come here.”

Nate grins and turns away from her. A glint of gold catches his eye – he’s well trained in spotting these things – and he makes his way toward the far temple wall, stepping up onto a low dais.

A stone snake lies curled up on a platform at almost Nate’s height, watching him with its emerald eyes. In its coils is the pendant they came here for, huge and elaborate and magnificently worked. The gold is a little tarnished – should be easy enough to clean – but the emeralds are flawless.

“Hello,” he whispers. He strokes the snake’s head with a finger, just for the sake of it, and then he gently eases the pendant out of its hold, and—

There’s a loud crash, and Elena yelps, and when he turns around he sees in the circle of her flashlight that a whole lot of rock has cascaded down to completely block the temple entrance. In his surprise, it takes him a moment to realise that the entire temple is shaking, the floor vibrating under his feet.

Uh-oh.

Nate guiltily tries putting the pendant back. The place doesn’t stop shaking, so he decides he may as well keep hold of it.

“What did you do?” Elena demands.

The shaking is getting worse. Dust and shards of stone fall from the ceiling. “Oh, I am having some serious _Aladdin_ flashbacks right now.”

“Well, I hope you brought the magic carpet,” Elena says, hurrying over to the blocked doorway. “I _knew_ something like this would happen. How do we get out?”

There’s an ominous cracking sound.

“At least we didn’t get shot at this time,” he offers.

“Nate, I swear...”

She’s trying to shift the debris blocking the way they came in, but they both know it’s probably going to take too long to clear it, even if moving the rocks doesn’t just make everything on top of them collapse faster. Nate thinks fast. The debris had to _come_ from somewhere, and—

He looks up.

There’s low evening sunlight coming through a hole in the roof.

“We’re gonna have to climb out,” he says to Elena, threading the pendant onto his belt as he scans the place for somewhere to start.

“We have to _climb_?”

“Yep.”

“All the way up there. Before this temple falls on our heads. Nate, I know you’re used to this kind of thing, but I don’t know if I can—”

“You’ll be fine,” Nate says, already hauling himself up an elaborately carved column. “It’s like climbing stairs. Just, you know, without the stairs.”

“Oh, God,” Elena mutters, but when Nate glances down she’s making a start on climbing anyway.

-

Nate waits by the hole in the roof to offer Elena his hand when she reaches the top. The stone underneath him groans terrifyingly as he pulls her up, but it doesn’t fall. They both get away from it as soon as they can.

“Okay,” Elena manages when she’s back on her feet, her voice strained from the effort of climbing. “How long’s this thing going to hold?”

“I don’t know,” he says. Maybe he should start reading up on architectural collapse; he sure seems to experience a lot of it.

Elena brushes her hair back from her face and starts looking around for a way off the roof. Nate knows he should probably be looking too – the temple is juddering threateningly beneath their feet – but there’s something he can’t stop thinking about. Elena’s looking good even like this, exhausted and covered in sweat and grime and Indonesian jungle, and, well, it’s not an opportunity that comes along every day.

He catches her arm, and she turns to look at him.

“Kiss me,” he says.

“ _Now?_ ”

“It’ll be cool. It’ll be dramatic.”

She pulls her arm away from him. “You can think about how to direct the film of your life later. Right now, let’s just focus on not getting killed.”

And she walks off to the side of the temple without looking back.

“Well, fine,” Nate mutters after a moment, quiet enough so he knows she can’t hear it. “I _guess_ we can do that.”

“Nate?” Elena calls, looking out over the edge.

-

Elena’s found what looks like a kind of speaking platform or raised altar: a platform with a big stone slab on it, on almost the same level as the roof they’re standing on. There are steps hewn roughly into the side, mostly still intact; it looks like they lead all the way down to the ground, although toward the bottom they disappear into thick greenery. That’s their way out of here.

Of course, the platform’s not actually connected to the roof and there’s kind of an unhealthy-looking drop between them, so they have to _get_ to their way out of here first.

“Do you think you can make that?” she asks.

Nate looks hard at the gap. He’s done a lot of jumping around and he’s got a pretty good idea of his limits, but the sun’s in the most annoying position possible, shining up into his eyes from just above the treetops, and it’s difficult to judge exactly.

There’s a loud crash from somewhere behind him, as another chunk of ancient masonry relocates itself.

“Well,” he says, backing up a little, “if I fall to my death, you should probably start looking for another way down.”

“Nate—” she says, but he’s already thrown himself out into space.

The edge of the platform catches him hard in the stomach, knocking the wind out of him, but he’s had a lot of practice by now in keeping hold of things no matter what hits him. He scrabbles at the top of the platform until he manages to dig his fingers into the weathered stone, and then, slowly and painfully, he begins to haul himself up.

He’d love to take a break right now, just lie down on the stone slab like he’s going to be sacrificed and get some sleep, but there’s something he needs to do before he can even think about that. He waits a few seconds to be sure his arms can take the strain, because Jesus Christ he’s not letting her fall, and then he’s standing at the edge, looking back across to the temple.

“Elena!” he shouts, holding out his hand to her. “Jump!”

-

The temple doesn’t collapse as Elena jumps, or when she catches his hand, or as he hauls her up onto the platform with him. It’s still standing for at least twenty seconds after they reach stable ground; they could have _strolled_ to a safe distance. One good, long, dramatic kiss and it could have been perfect. Elena is filming all the time; how can she not have more of a sense of these things? Now a magnificent temple has collapsed, and they couldn’t even give it a worthy final moment.

Still. They’ve got a hell of a pendant. And at least they were able to see the place while it was still standing.

Elena’s right; it’s not really about the money.

-

They take a break in the jungle when they’ve covered enough ground to avoid anything that might have heard the temple collapsing and decided to investigate. Elena sits on a low rock and pulls up the leg of her pants to inspect her bruises; Nate stands under a tree, hands in the pockets of his jeans, and he looks back the way they came, although the actual temple’s way out of sight by now, and he thinks.

A long time passes before Elena nudges him, bringing him out of his reverie. He’d almost forgotten she was here. “What’s on your mind?”

Yeah, they’ve got what they technically came for, and they escaped with their lives, and that’s all great, but...

“We could have been people who’d kissed on top of a collapsing temple,” he says, wistfully. “We could be standing here right now, knowing we’re always going to be people who kissed on top of a collapsing temple.”

She laughs. “Right, and instead we’re boring people who just escaped from a collapsing temple.” She leans against him, rests an arm across his back. “There’ll be other collapsing temples. I mean, one of us is you.”

“You don’t end up on top of a collapsing temple as often as you’d think,” he says. “That was only my second.”

“Oh, is that all?”

“Last time was with Sully. He wouldn’t kiss me either.”

“Look,” she says, “I can kiss you on a swaying dock or something. We’ll work up to the mortal danger. But it’d be really nice if the next crazy treasure hunt didn’t involve any almost-dying at all.”

-

“Okay, Elena,” Nate says, “I’ll understand if you don’t want to come along on this one, but just hear me out completely, okay?”

She sits back and watches him with obvious suspicion. He’s got to admit he kind of deserves it.

“So the legends say this idol _is_ meant to have a curse on it,” Nate says, laying out his diagrams, “but I’m like eighty per cent sure this time it’s not real.”


End file.
